POLICY GUIDANCE: New ICE Policy Blocks Millions of Detained Migrants From Seeking Bond

The policy shift, issued under what’s known as interim guidance by acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons last week, will apply to all immigrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally, no matter when. Lyons told officers in a memo that such immigrants should remain in detention throughout their deportation proceedings, which can stretch for months or even years, according to the official, who had been briefed on the memo.

The move marks a significant departure from decades of practice, when immigration judges had the latitude to release someone from detention on a bond if they weren’t deemed a flight risk. Immigration law states that all immigrants in the country illegally must be detained while their fates are decided, but with limited beds available in ICE jails, the government had considered the law effectively impossible to enforce.

The Washington Post on Monday evening earlier reported on the new policy.

Roughly 57,800 people were in ICE detention as of June 29, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, known as TRAC. 

With a coming infusion of tens of billions of dollars from President Trump’s signature tax and spending package, ICE is hoping to expand its detention capacity to 100,000 beds, up from roughly 40,000 under the Biden administration. Trump administration officials hope to soon begin stepping up deportation efforts, which have lagged behind in the early months of Trump’s second terrm.

The legal interpretation ICE is now using has faced previous legal challenges in Washington state, where advocates say immigration court judges in Tacoma for years denied bond to almost all of the immigrants there who have entered the country illegally.

A spokesperson for ICE didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.